


Reclamation

by ChiropteraJones



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen, Yeerks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-04 16:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChiropteraJones/pseuds/ChiropteraJones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is the events in the life of a low-ranking controller in an insignificant outpost of the Yeerk invasion of Earth, focussing on the human, Dean, and his struggle with the yeerk as well as outside events. All characters are OCs. Rated T for coarse language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Excitement. Nervousness. Joy. They weren't Dean's emotions, he didn't feel them – but they were there. Someone, somewhere, was jittery with anticipation, and at the same time happier than they'd ever been before.

Why did he know what this other person felt?

Someone pushed him aside, guided him with dispassionate hands on his shoulders to slump against the wall. Ian, Dean remembered, the guy's name was Ian. He was the leader of Dean's Sharing group at school. And he'd been one of the people who had just pushed Dean's head into the basin of revolting grey water still sitting on the table.

What is this? Dean wanted to ask him indignantly. Is this some sort of hazing? Some sort of initiation ritual you make all the new members go through? I thought the Sharing was supposed to be against all that sort of rubbish.

But he couldn't say anything. He moved his mouth, and made nothing but a vague "Uhhh" noise. Then he couldn't move it at all. He couldn't even make himself sit up straight against the wall. He could see, though, and what he saw was one of the other kids from school having his head pushed into the basin as well. He was held under for some moments, his arms wrenching against the two older members holding him. Then he stopped moving, stopped fighting, and the two older members put him aside.

But all of this seemed to be rather distant, and he was distracted by the emotions he could still feel, emanating from something outside himself. Something other.

‹Ah!› he thought he heard. ‹Ah-hh!› Disbelief and joy. Bliss.

Dean's eyes moved, twitching in their sockets under their own volition. They couldn't seem to decide what to look at. They moved jerkily from the bright red shirt one of the Sharing people had on, to the yellow poster on the wall, to the patterns the light from the window made on the ceiling, to some girl's jeans, to a hand as it pushed that girl's head down into the water...

Dean's own fingers twitched. They flexed, closed into a fist, drummed against the floor.

That was the thing that finally scared Dean.

What's happening to me? he thought. I didn't do that! Am I paralysed? Have I got some sort of brain injury? Oh no...

He tried to still his fingers, but there was no response. Nothing! They might as well have been somebody else's hands. They pushed against the floor, and suddenly his arms were in on the mutiny as well, straightening his back against the wall.

After a few seconds, his body tried ineffectively to struggle to its feet.

What the hell! Dean cried. How is this possible? No, stop, how is this happening? Frightened, he tried to freeze, like an animal in the headlights of a car.

His body figured out what it was doing and stood. From that other place came a pulse of satisfaction, pride, and more wonder.

Of course! It was so obvious, how could have not have seen it? They were one and the same.

‹Stop it!› he called to that place, that mind, the source of the pleasure and concentration that was sitting inside his mind like a little walled-off tumour. ‹What are you? Who are you? Please, stop!›

He felt a jolt from that mind. Surprise.

‹Yeah, you!› Dean said. ‹Stop that. What the hell do you think you're doing?›

After a moment when it wavered, the mind swept on. It was making Dean's body lean against the wall with one hand, as if it was still unsteady on his legs.

"How are you doing..." It was Ian. He consulted a clipboard. "... Desca four-three-zero-two?"

"Mmmmnh," Dean heard coming out of his own mouth. He straightened up, squared his feet, and tried to speak again – all despite his own efforts to stop it. "Muh?"

Then there was a new feeling – something disturbing his mind, poring through it, looking for something.

"I – am – fine," his body said. "No... problems to... to report."

"Good," Ian said crisply. "Get a move on, you're supposed to be out of here in a few minutes." He moved on to the next person, a boy Dean knew vaguely from school, who was slumped against the wall staring at his hands as if he'd never seen them before.

‹No problems? No problems?› Dean demanded. ‹What is this? What's going on?›

Help, he tried to call. Help me!

He steeled himself and tried again.

"HEL-mph," he said. The mind clamped tight on his mouth.

‹Let me talk!› Dean said. ‹Get out! Let go, go away, stop it! Who are you?›

There was no response – but the feeling started again. It was like being touched in a place you didn't know you had, Dean thought, dazed. If someone had told him yesterday that you could feel someone touching your memories he would have said they were crazy, but that was what was happening. The other mind was flicking through them as if they were cards or CDs in a shallow box. It didn't hurt exactly, but...

‹Stop it! Get out of there, that's mine!› Mine. Get out.

The mind flinched, stopped for a second, and then kept going. School flashed behind Dean's eyes. Home, his mother, friends... There was nothing it wasn't pushing trough, no memories it couldn't see. It skimmed the surface of most of them, but a few it plunged deep into.

... He was six or seven, at a birthday party. He spilled a drink and watched toxic-looking blue liquid spread across the cheap paper table cloth to a soundtrack of shrill childish laughter.

... He was eleven, and home alone for an afternoon. He put a few millimetres of his mother's port in the bottom of a plastic cup and tipped it onto his tongue, just to see what it tasted like. It was horrible and he spat it out into the sink guiltily.

... He didn't know how old he was. He fell on the rough concrete of the play ground, and scraped bloody lines down his knee. He cried, and burned with shame for it.

... He stepped up onto the stage and accepted the certificate for first place in Science. The principal squeezed his hand firmly and he mumbled something inane, but the grin on his face was genuine.

‹Get out! Get out, get out! You can't see those!›

... "Bye, Dean, have fun," his mother said. "When will you be back?"

"Ah, probably not too late," he said, checking his pocket for his wallet and glancing at the time. "I'm starting to get... disillusioned with this whole Sharing thing, you know? They're kind of pushy. They keep asking me to get more involved, and they talk like everything they do is bigger and better than anything anyone has ever done in the history of the world." Dean rolled his eyes. "I told Ian that I'd go to this special private meeting about becoming a 'full member' tonight, but I think I'll be backing out."

"Well, why don't you want to become more involved?" she said. "Of course, I can see how it would cut into your extremely busy schedule of..." She paused teasingly. "I forget. What is it you do all afternoon again?"

"Har-dee har, Mum," he grumbled. "I know, I know. I should be back by seven."

His wrist rose and his eyes looked, deliberately, at his watch. 6:45. His eyes rose again to survey the room.

"Hey – Desca," the girl in jeans said to him. "Is that you?"

"Yeah," the invader said with his mouth. "Yes. Yeah. It's me. Tasnik?"

"Yes!" she said. They gazed at each other for a few seconds. The girl had freckles, bleached blonde hair that was growing out dark brown, and blue eyes. Dean didn't know her.

"This is so-!"

"I can't believe we finally-!"

"–amazing-"

"Isn't it incredible?"

They both burst out talking at once. Around them, the other people who'd been dunked in the pool were beginning to do the same. Dean could feel a smile stretching his mouth, could feel the bubbling happiness of the invader.

‹No!› he shouted. ‹No! Hey! Hey, what about me? Don't you ignore me!› What right did that other mind have to feel happy, when Dean was confused and frightened and struggling desperately to move something, anything, for himself?

"I need to go," the invader said, after a few moments. "This host is due back to his home soon."

Ian glanced over at him. "Yes, go. You know your orders for the moment – we'll sort out schedules at the next Sharing meeting. Do not miss it."

"Yes, sir."

The invader piloted Dean's body out of the room – it was a classroom at Dean's school. Dean wished, now, that he'd been a bit more insistent about going home earlier. He wished he hadn't told Ian he'd come to the private meeting. He wished he'd been just a little suspicious when Ian had brought them inside the school when they were supposed to be staying in the barbecue area.

Dean braced himself against his own body. ‹No. No. No,› he said. ‹We're not doing this. We stop, right here. This stops.›

He managed to hold one leg still, tripping himself. His body stumbled and fell forward. Dean went to throw his arms out to catch his weight – but the other mind fought him back, with the end result that Dean landed heavily on his shoulder without even a half-hearted attempt to stop it.

‹Oww!›

Dean heard that other voice, bright with shock.

‹Hey!› he said. ‹I know you can hear me, don't bother pretending you can't!›

‹Quiet,› the other mind said absently. ‹That hurt!›

‹No shit, it hurt,› Dean said. ‹Don't move or I'll do it again! Who are you?›

The invader made Dean's body get up. It was so strange, to see the pale tan arms and legs moving about in front of his eyes: they didn't feel like his anymore. Dean mustered all his strength to try and trip himself again, but it didn't work. The other mind was ready for him now.

‹Please! Listen, come on, just stop doing that and talk to me,› Dean pleaded. Maybe politeness would work better. Weren't supernatural entities supposed to be big on manners? He couldn't believe he was thinking that. Supernatural entities? ‹Please, will you stop controlling my body and answer me?› His ankle throbbed with pain, and his shoulder did as well where he'd struck it on the floor.

There was no answer, and they continued down the hall, out the swinging door and into the darkness outside. Dean would have stopped and waited for his eyes to adjust, but the thing controlling him now had other ideas. It paused to rake through Dean's memories again, and then headed to the barbecue area where he'd left his bike.

Ian had acted so... weirdly tonight, Dean thought. In all their previous interactions Ian had always had this eager, goofy grin on his face. One of those people that just oozed enthusiasm for whatever task they were currently doing, and managed to get that enthusiasm all over everybody else a surprising amount of the time.

It must be an act, Dean realised, as he was carried along into the cool evening air. It was dark already. Ian had been like that as long as Dean had known him. For how long had he been one of Them? Because it was increasingly clear that there was a Them, and that Dean was now one of Them.

‹What are you?› Dean cried. ‹What the hell are you?›

Finally, the mind deigned to answer. ‹I am a yeerk,› it said proudly. ‹I know that you don't know what that is, so I will explain. We are an alien species, much more technologically advanced than you are, and we are taking over your world. You are now my host. As we speak, my body is wrapped around your brain, controlling your every movement, overriding your commands. Your body is mine and I will do with it what I wish, and I would advise you to stop making such a fuss.›

‹What?› Dean said. ‹No... no, I don't believe you! This is too crazy!›

‹Believe what you like,› the alien said as it wheeled the bike onto the road. ‹It's nothing to me.›

***

They got home by seven, like Dean had said he would. There were lights on in the kitchen and living room. The imposter climbed up the three short steps to the front door, and went in.

‹Now we'll see!› Dean said desperately. ‹Now I'll get rid of you!›

His mother was in the living room, curled up on the couch with the remote.

"Hi, Mum," his voice said. The alien coughed to cover how rough his voice was – rough, because Dean was bringing all of his will to bear on it. ‹Help! Mum, help, something's happened!›

"Oh, hi, Dean," she said brightly. Just as if nothing was wrong. "How was the barbecue?"

"Uh... good," the alien said.

‹Mum?› Dean cried. ‹Mum! Can't you tell something's not right? Come on! Ask me! Ask me if I'm OK!›

"I'm going to stay up a little longer, watch some TV. You want to watch a movie together or something?" Mum said. "You can pick." She smiled at Dean.

‹Mum!› Dean said, disbelieving. ‹It's not me! Damn you, Mum, can't you even tell when I'm not myself? Literally?›

The other mind, the yeerk, was nervous. It spent a long time going through Dean's memories, memories of how Dean usually spent his nights at home. "Nah," it said eventually. "Think I'll head to my room. Do some homework. Maybe get an early night."

"OK. Good night, sweetie," she said, smiling up at the imposter. "I probably won't see you in the morning because I have early shift."

‹Mum! Mum!› Dean yelled in his head. He tried, he tried so hard to say it aloud. ‹Mum, help! Help me! Help me!›

"Good night," the yeerk said. It smiled at his mother, then turned and made its way towards Dean's bedroom.

‹No! No! No!› Frantically, Dean lunged back for the couch, taking advantage of the yeerk's sudden, fleeting relief at having successfully fooled his mother.

‹No!› The yeerk scrambled for control, panicked.

"Mum!" Dean managed to whisper through a tight throat. He fell backwards and landed awkwardly in the hall with a THUMP.

"Dean? Was that you?"

‹Yes! Yes, Mum, help!› Dean sobbed.

"Oh... yeah," his voice said instead, breathless. "Just tripped on the rug." It laughed weakly. Dean's heart was pounding, his hands shaking as he rolled over and stood up. The other mind against his was aflutter with panic.

"Oh! Are you all right?" his mother called from the couch.

"Yeah, I'm fine!" the imposter said quickly. "Just fine! No problems. Good night!"

The alien drew his door shut behind them both and stood with its back to it, in the darkness, just breathing for a few minutes.

‹No!› Dean screamed. ‹You can't do this to me! Let me go, get out! Get out of my head!›

The yeerk switched on the light and swept the room with its – with Dean's – eyes. Dean railed against it as it noted the roughly made bed, the bookshelves, the desk covered in papers and pens, the bedside table and the dish on it that contained his keys and small change. The school bag lying like a dead thing in the middle of the floor beside his school shoes.

It went and sat on the bed, pulled his schoolbag towards it. One by one, it pulled out all the books, looked at them, laid them on its lap and turned the pages.

‹Noooo!› Dean said. ‹Why are you doing this? Why? Get out!›

‹That was a pointless endeavour. › For only the second time, the yeerk was addressing him directly. ‹ You will not catch me off guard like that again, human. Even if you could, you cannot maintain it for more than a few seconds.›

‹This body is mine,› Dean snarled. ‹Go find your own!› He couldn't believe it. He had been so sure his mother would recognise that there was something wrong. There was always a tell tale sign of mind control in the movies - a light in the eyes, a robotic quality to the voice. Something, anything. If nothing else, it would slip up eventually. How could his own mother fail to realise that her son wasn't her son anymore?

‹No,› the alien informed him. ‹You don't understand. I have all your memories. I know everything you do. I know what you would do in every situation. I am you, now.›

‹No! No! No!›

The yeerk put him aside and stood. It prowled Dean's room, running fingers over the surfaces and picking things up to look at them. Dean didn't know what it felt. He was too wrapped up in his own feelings. To him, the yeerk seemed as unmoved and unmoveable as a rock, while Dean raged and screamed abuse at it. It laid Dean's body down on the bed and pretended to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

The Sharing barbecue had been on Friday night. On Saturday morning, Dean got up uncharacteristically early and bicycled to the community centre for the youth group meeting that was on. He usually didn't go to Saturday morning meetings. He preferred to sleep in. But he didn't have a choice any more.

He was silent as the alien made him walk into their meeting room and sit down near the front. He had yelled and threatened through most of the night and nothing had happened, and now he couldn't summon the energy to think of  _anything_ much. He thought, though, that the alien he was now a prisoner of wasn't all that happy either. Still fairly upbeat, but the smug superiority was dimmed.

The room was something like a small lecture theatre, with rows of seats marching downwards to a 'stage' area of floor. Dean's school used it sometimes for events, and the groups that the Sharing had set up in the local schools had combined meetings there every week. The alien presence in Dean's head accessed his memories again. He'd never been to that many combined meetings even when he had been into Sharing stuff – but sometimes there had been cute girls there from other schools.

In the present, the room was full of chattering teens and pre-teens. Two girls and a boy chased each other up and down the stairs in some incomprehensible, giggling game.

"Hey everybody, good morning!" Ian said, standing up and moving to the front of the room. Tall, sun-browned, lanky, sporty – if he hadn't been so easy-going and personable, Dean thought he would probably have been despised at school for a teacher's pet. This sort of thing was right up his alley. He waved his arms at them all with a good-natured grin. "Quiet, now, everyone, pipe down. You two up there, leave each other alone! You don't know where he's been."

Everybody laughed. The yeerk looked around uneasily, maybe thinking that it should have laughed too, but it was too late.

"First item on the agenda – come on now, quiet, please – the barbecue last night was a great success! I hope everybody had a  _fantastic_  time. Next month it'll be St Laurence's turn to host the party, so I hope you guys were taking notes." He paused, and took a slightly more serious tone. "I would, however, like to take the opportunity to remind you all that alcohol is  _strictly prohibited_  during Sharing-sponsored events." He brightened up again. "Also, and more importantly, I'd like to welcome all the guys and girls who became full members this week! It's good to have you on board! There will be a special meeting for Sharing full members after this one's over, so make sure you stick around. There is so much we're going to achieve together. Now, I want to talk to you all about the fund-raiser we're starting next week for the..."

The meeting went on for the next hour. Ian didn't talk for all of it; people were called down to talk about other projects the Sharing were organising. Dean nearly dozed off; he hadn't slept much. Nothing out of the ordinary happened until the end.

"That's all for today, guys," Ian announced. He raised his voice over the chatter that arose. "Don't you disappear, full members, we're not finished with you yet!" He laughed. "Everybody else, see you next week!"

The yeerk stood up, startling Dean somewhat, and went down to the front of the room, weaving between people heading out. Soon there were only 20 or so people left in the room. One of them, wearing a bright blue shirt, was the girl Dean had seen briefly last night. Dean could feel the yeerk cheering up at the sight of her.

"Hey, Tasnik!" the yeerk said.

"Hi, Desca," she said, tossing her yellow tresses. It, Dean thought to himself. It wasn't a human girl facing him and talking. It was a yeerk, hidden behind those light blue eyes and that pink lip-gloss.

"We barely got any time to talk yesterday. How were your first few hours in a host body?"

"This body is amazing," his yeerk said eagerly. "So strong. So quick. And the sight!"

"I know!" the other yeerk said. "It's nothing like I imagined at all."

_They aren't worried about anybody hearing them,_  Dean realised.  _Everybody else here, all these 'full members'... they must all be in on it. All of them, taken over!_

"I would have preferred a Hork-bajir, though," the girl, Tasnik, said. "This human is barely full-grown. I mean, look at it." She held out her hands, gestured at the body. "It's strong, but it's soft. Delicate. Yours is better."

"It is delicate, compared to many of them," his yeerk agreed. Dean's eyes examined the girl's body openly. "But, look how nimble the fingers are. I am sure they will be useful for tech work."

"I suppose," she said. "But you don't get promotions with fiddly things like that, Desca." She gave Dean's body a playful blow to the shoulder. "If you like this body so much, maybe we should swap. You can be the computer technician, and I'll rise up the ranks and make Sub-Visser in a few years." She laughed.

"Oh, yes," Dean's yeerk, seemingly named Desca, scoffed. "And then you'll single-handedly wipe out a whole Dome ship's worth of Andalites, save the Pool Ship, and go on to win us Earth while our superiors watch in awe. I know."

_Win us Earth?_  Dean thought. He had been in a disbelieving daze most of the morning, watching this meeting play out in front of his helpless eyes. But that woke him up somewhat. ‹Win you Earth! You're taking over Earth?› he said, appalled. ‹Argh! I'm so stupid, of course you are!  _What else would body-stealing aliens be doing_?›

"You may laugh now, but you'll see," Tasnik said. "And don't you tell me you don't have your own little fantasies. It's OK, though, I'll still remember my old friends from the pool when I'm a Sub-Visser. I'll look out for you."

"Where  _are_  the others?" Desca asked. "Are they here?"

The blonde girl shook her head firmly. "Nope. I checked. I think they might've all got older hosts. Or maybe not even human at all."

_Not human,_  Dean thought.  _So there are other aliens here too?_

"They might have got the better deal," Desca grumbled. "This host's time is not his own for most of the day, he has training. How are we supposed to pretend to be them and get anything done?"

"School, Desca, it's called school," Tasnik said. "I doubt they do any training of actual use there. We'll manage somehow."

"All right, that's enough socialising!" Ian's voice was raised over the chatter. All the talk stopped dead, often mid-word: a response no authority figure could have achieved with a group of teenagers.

Ian was standing behind the desk on the left of the floor, his face nearly expressionless. His gaze swept the room, cold and hard.

Dean caught something moving in the corner of his eye, but he had to wait for the alien to move his head before he could see what it was. Another girl, wearing a green skirt, had sidled up to Desca and Tasnik. She didn't wave or smile or wink at them, like any of Dean's friends would have done sneaking into a meeting that was already in progress. She just fixed her eyes on Ian and remained silent. Dean could feel curiosity emanating from the presence in his head, but it turned his head back to watch Ian.

"Is the room secured?" Ian said.

"Yes, sir," someone called from the back of the room.

"Good," Ian said. He came around to the front of the desk and leaned against it, arms folded. "Does anybody have any problems to report?"

There was a chorus of subdued 'No, sir'.

Ian nodded. "I am Aldor four-zero-three of the Hett Simplat pool," he declared. "My rank is two hundred seventy-three, my host's name is Ian Hitchens. You will all follow my orders. Above me, though, your superior is Sub-visser one-one-eight. You will meet the Sub-visser when you report to our facilities for training tomorrow. The facilities are approximately ten minutes' drive out of town; a bus route goes past it. Report there at seven o'clock sharp."

He was barely recognisable: the smile and good-natured sparkle in his eyes were gone. Parents would not have entrusted their teenaged offspring to him if they could see him now, Dean thought vaguely.

"There are some things you need to know about our operation here," Ian continued – or, rather, 'Aldor 403' continued. "The Sharing organisation is our main recruitment source. I'm sure I don't need to tell you to funnel as many humans as possible into it. As well as the one you'll see tomorrow, we have a number of facilities scattered around the area. You will see these  _only_ if you receive an assignment there, and they are otherwise strictly off limits. The exception, of course, is the buildings situated within the pool complex. I will now inform you of the various entrances to the pool."

Dean listened in dismay. The Sharing was a recruitment organisation for an alien invasion. ‹What does a pool have to do with anything?›

"There are a number of entrances," Aldor went on. "All of the general access ones are in or around the shopping centre on Centenary road. I assume you are all familiar with it?" He paused.

"Yes, sir," his yeerk said along with the rest.

Ian/Aldor went back around to the back of the desk, pulled a piece of paper out from under it, and laid it flat. "Come in where you can see," he ordered as he unfolded it, with a crisp gesture around the room. The other teenagers in the room crowded forward cautiously.

The paper turned out to be a photocopied map of the shopping centre, as far as Dean could see. The shop names were written in – along with several red dots.

"These mark the entrances," Aldor said. "Most aren't very difficult to get into." His finger swept across the map to point at one dot. "This one is the disabled bathroom near the food court. There is a button hidden under a panel, above the left railing. This..." his finger changed position to point at another red dot. "Is in Coles. Go through into the back storeroom, and then directly to the left you'll find a doorway.  _This_  one is in the dressing rooms of a women's clothing store called Destiny, behind the mirror of the third stall. I suggest those of you with male host bodies don't use this one."

‹Wait – was that a joke?› Dean wondered. No, it couldn't be. There had been no change in inflection, and he was already going on.

"This one is in the dressing rooms of a jeans store, the first stall. There is a catch under the seat. This one is in the back rooms of a hairdresser; ask for the Wednesday special deal. Outside the shopping centre, there are two. One is the liquor store on the corner of Centenary Road and Maitland Street – go through to the back, and ask the employee in the red shirt to help you find pineapple liqueur. The other is the service station on Green Street, or rather the empty space between it and the back fence. Push in the marked loose brick."

‹So many!› Dean said, with dawning horror. He had been thinking of this operation as being small, confined to the Sharing. But how could they have put in so many secret passages? They must own all of those shops, if not the whole centre. How many people would that make it?

And what was this pool that they were all entrances  _to_?

Aldor folded the map back up again. "The current key code for the entrances is 87294. These codes will change every week, and the new code will be announced at training. If you forget the key, the controllers manning the entrances will not tell it to you; you can go hungry until you remember it."

There! The first clue to the purpose of this mysterious 'pool'. Something to do with food, obviously, Dean thought. He supposed a controller must be their word for what he was now. Someone who'd been taken, one of Them.

"The most important thing is that you are  _discreet_ about entering and leaving the pool. Of course, there are controllers stationed at most of them, but always consider that a human might be watching you." Aldor adopted a lecturing tone. His hands were behind his back, his feet square – an almost military posture. "Secrecy is our most precious weapon on this planet, and it is fragile. The humans are unintelligent and unobservant for the most part, but that is no reason to become complacent. If any one of you is the cause of a breach of security..." he paused, heavily, swept them all with his steely regard again, and continued more softly. "Rest assured, before your death you will have a long time in which to regret your carelessness."

This sort of threat seemed to be business as usual, because the yeerk in Dean's head barely blinked at it. It made Dean feel a little better to hear that the yeerks were still afraid enough of humans to want to hide from them – already he began to wonder how he could engineer a 'security breach'. The yeerk in his head took notice of  _that_ , at least, but only briefly.

"All of you had better shape up," Aldor was saying. "Your days of lazing around in the pool are over; you all have hosts now and you will be expected to make the best possible use of them." He smiled, finally, a cold smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "The Empire is always keeping an eye out for intelligent and ambitious yeerks. Do your duty well, show yourself to be an asset, and you will be promoted. Until then, do what the Sub-visser says and you won't come to harm. Disobey, or prove yourself incompetent, and we will find other uses for you.

That will be all; you are dismissed."

Aldor looked down and began to collect papers together. The crowd of teenagers, released, began to talk again, cautiously. Some of them headed straight to the door; Dean's yeerk wasn't one of them.

The other girl turned at last to Desca and Tasnik. ‹Another old friend of yours, I suppose,› Dean said bitterly. Even if the alien never answered him, it seemed to be able to 'hear' whatever Dean was thinking anyway. Why not throw away the last pretence at solitude inside his head that he had and address it directly?

Dean saw, now, that the girl had caramel-coloured skin and long dark hair. She wore a great many coloured bangles. "It's Indiss," she said to the others' questioning looks.

"Indiss!" Tasnik exclaimed. "I had begun to think you'd got a posting somewhere else!"

"It's good to see you!" Dean's yeerk said, Dean's face breaking into a welcoming smile.

"Good to see you, too," she said, smiling a devastatingly pretty smile. "Tas, my host and yours go to the same school!"

"Really?" Tasnik said. "We'll probably see each other a lot, then!"

"She doesn't know yours, though, Desca," the new girl said apologetically. "But we'll still see each other around, right? We can synchronise our feeding schedules."

"We can," Desca agreed. "The three of us together. Won't this be great?"

‹What a charming little reunion this is!› Dean shouted. ‹I'm sure this whole invasion will be absolutely wonderful fun for the three of you, congratulations!›

There was a twinge of annoyance from his yeerk, quickly pushed aside.

"It  _is_ great," Tasnik said. "After all, I'll be needing some trusty lieutenants once I start rising up the ranks. You two will do nicely." She laughed and slung her arms around their shoulders, Dean on her right and Indiss on her left.

" _Someone_ 's very touchy-feely with their new body," Indiss said archly, shrugging her off. "Has she been like this all morning, Desca?"

"Oh, yeah," Desca confirmed. "Needs to be knocked down a peg or two, in my opinion."

"Knock away," Tasnik said, spreading her arms out and grinning. "I bet I can take you even if my host is shorter and weaker than yours."

"Can we please have these bodies for at _least_  a feeding cycle before you injure them in silly games?" Indiss said.

‹Are you alien invaders or a bunch of kids on holiday?› Dean said. He was furious. ‹Talking about me like I'm some sort of, I don't know, a new car or something!  _How dare you_? How fucking  _dare_  you? Get out!› All his rage came flooding back, and he snatched suddenly at control. Run. Just run, get away from them somehow, and maybe finally wake up out of this nightmare.

He stumbled backwards, caught his balance. ‹Yes!› His body was his again, the yeerk thrown into confusion. ‹ _Now run!›_ He turned, fixed his eyes on the door, threw himself forward...

‹I don't think so.› Grimly, the yeerk shouldered him aside. Dean stopped, straightened up, brushed his hair out of his face coolly, and turned back to the two girls. He'd barely made it two steps.

‹No! No! I had it, for a few seconds!› Dean cried. ‹No!›

"Uh, Desca, what was  _that_?" Indiss said, her eyebrows raised disdainfully.

Embarrassment flooded from the yeerk. "I... I just..." Blood rushed to Dean's face. "The host fights me sometimes. It caught me off guard for a second there."

Tasnik laughed.

‹No,› Dean whispered. ‹I almost had it!› But, of course... he hadn't had anything. Maybe he could run away from this room and these people, but how could he run away from the alien inside his own head? What had he hoped to achieve? ‹I'm such an idiot. Why did I even do that?›

Desca glanced around to see how many other people had seen it – but there was barely anybody in the room anymore. Just Aldor/Ian, shoving some pieces of paper into his backpack, who raised one eyebrow at them in silent judgement.

"I dismissed you all," he said mildly. "If you have the time, you could go and mix with the non-controller Sharing members outside. Try to convince them to become full members themselves. Desca 4302, isn't it?"

"...Yes," Desca said. "Sir."

"I'll see you at school on Monday. I expect you'll be seeing a lot of me." He nodded at them, then swung the backpack onto his shoulders and headed to the exit. The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut.

Indiss whistled softly. Dean wondered at how quickly the aliens seemed to be adopting mannerisms like that. Depressingly, it confirmed what Desca had said about them being perfect impersonators. Probably, he thought, the girl herself used to do that; just as Tasnik's host tossed her hair, and just as Dean shoved his hands in his pockets when embarrassed, as he was doing now.

"Well done, Desca," she said. "He'll remember you."

Desca growled a word Dean didn't recognise. Probably something obscene.

Tasnik patted him on the shoulder. "Never mind," she said sympathetically. "I heard Aldor is a pretty easy commander, so I'm sure it isn't too bad. Just try not to stuff up in front of him again."

Desca sighed.

‹Oh,› Dean said. ‹I see I'm smarter than I thought. That's why I did it. To get at  _you._ ›

"C'mon," Tasnik said. "Let's go see what those other humans are doing, like he said."

The three of them began to walk up the stairs. Dean watched Indiss' green skirt swirling around her legs a step or two in front of him. Another reason it had been a good move, he realised with growing hope. Practice. ‹Two steps. I got two steps. What could I do with two steps in the right place – or, from your position, the wrong place?›

It turned out that what the other Sharing kids were doing was a game of volleyball. There was a sandpit and net set up around the back of the community centre, and it was easy to follow the shouts and noise of the game around the corner.

They watched from the sidelines. There didn't appear to be much in the way of rule enforcement, and everybody seemed to be keeping track of the score themselves.

"You know, we ought to know each other's host names," Tasnik remarked in an undertone, keeping an eye on the other teenagers on the sideline. "Mine is Julie."

"Mine is Tricia," Indiss said.

"Dean," Desca said.

The ball, dirty yellow and scuffed, came flying towards them. Tasnik snatched it out of the air and laughed. "Can I play?"

"Sure," one of the boys their age said. He grinned and winked at them. "So, full members, hey? Congratulations!"

"Thanks!" Julie said, and fluffed her hair out with her hands, batting her eyelashes. "I really feel it was something I needed, you know? I'm so happy now I know there's always a place for me here!"

"I know!" he said eagerly.

‹Controller,› Dean thought gloomily.

"Lachie, stop flirting with her and get the game back on," one of the younger kids said. One or two of the others laughed, and Tasnik kicked off her strappy shoes and bounded into the court.

"I'll serve," she said, then threw the ball up into the air and hit it across the net.

"Laying it on a bit thick, don't you think?" Indiss murmured to Desca.

It shrugged. "I don't know."

"Are you going to play?"

"Maybe not," Desca said. "I think maybe I should head back home... it's going to be so frustrating, always having to account for our whereabouts to people."

"It is," she agreed. "But I guess the Sharing will come in handy there, too."

I told Mum I was going to quit the Sharing, Dean thought. Will she notice that I've changed my attitude to it completely?

"Anyway, see you tomorrow," Desca said. "At training."

***

To Dean's frustration, his mother didn't comment on his unusual outing to the meeting, just kissing him absently on the forehead and wishing him good morning. She was short, Dean's mother, so she invariably had to pull him down to do that. She was slender, too, with blond-ish hair. Dean didn't look much like her except when he smiled, or so he'd been told, and his own hair was dark brown. He supposed he took after his dad.

In the afternoon she went out and left Dean to his own devices. The yeerk spent the time examining Dean's memories at excruciating length, particularly school ones, and reading a book he'd been assigned for English with their dog, Mitzi, lying on his feet. She hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary either. ‹Dumb mutt,› Dean told her bitterly. ‹Some best friend you are.› Why could nobody see what was happening?

That night, just as a heartsick but exhausted Dean was hovering on the edge of sleep, the yeerk spoke.

‹You are not at all what I expected.›

‹What?› Dean said, snapping awake. ‹What did you say?›

But, having delivered this cryptic sentence and woken Dean up, it fell silent and refused to speak again. Dean was too tired to stay awake to pursue it.


	3. Chapter 3

"Dean, what are you doing up?"

Desca looked up, from where it was quickly buttering a slice of toast in Dean's kitchen. Dean's mother was standing in the hallway, in pink pyjamas, looking at him blearily.

Dean's mother was a nurse and worked odd hours, so Dean was habitually quiet in the mornings so as not to wake her up if she was asleep. He guessed the yeerk hadn't quite got the hang of that yet.

It searched feverishly through his memory – it hadn't expected to be ambushed in the kitchen, and it was nervous already anyway. "Oh – sorry, mum," it said lightly. "I forgot to tell you yesterday, this Sharing thing starts at seven."

‹I hate you,› Dean said. He felt his hands loosely holding the knife and the toast, no longer his to control. ‹I've never hated anybody before in my life, but I hate you.›

"Oh," his mother said. She frowned, pushing a hand through her dishevelled hair. "You got up at six on a Sunday to go to some fund-raising committee? I thought you were sick of the Sharing. You said that you – Dean, are you OK? You dropped your toast."

"Whoops," Desca said in a strained voice. It was staring at Dean's hands, which were white-knuckled and trembling, the blunt butter-knife clenched tight in the right one. Dean's left wrist stung where he'd stabbed at it wildly with the knife. "I guess I changed my mind about the Sharing. You should go back to bed; I'm sorry I woke you up."

‹I hate you! I hate you!›

"You're catching the bus?" his mother said.

"Yes. I told you that yesterday," the yeerk said, slightly impatiently. "I will be catching the bus home as well, probably fairly late in the day." It paused, and seemed to realise it had done something wrong. "I mean, is that OK, Mum?"

"I guess if it's a Sharing thing," she said uncertainly. "Are there going to be other kids you know there? Any teachers from school?"

‹No! No! I hate you! Get out!›

"Yeah," it said. "Ian invited me to come with him. You know Ian Hitchens, right?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "Well, that's nice, Dean love. You have fun." She yawned widely, and shuffled back down the hall.

‹You bastard! I hate you! Get out, get out of my head, go away and leave me alone!›

Desca patted the pockets of Dean's jeans for his bus fare and house key, then picked up the toast from the floor and set off for the bus stop. The front door needed to be held and closed gently so it didn't slam and wake his mother. The yeerk noted this as it occurred to Dean, and carefully eased the door shut.

The morning was brisk and cool, delicate orange light seeping around the clouds that massed in the east. The yeerk kept looking at those clouds as it walked, snatching brief hungry glances at them.

The bus stop wasn't far, only ten minutes walk away. It was the same one that Dean went to every school morning.

Somebody was already waiting there, a teenage boy with a head of straight black hair who was kicking with single-minded surliness at the curb.

He looked up as Dean approached. His features were Asian. "Hey," he said grudgingly. "You're Sharing?"

"Yeah," the yeerk said. It formed Dean's mouth into an appropriate smile.

The other boy looked Dean up and down. "Full member?"

"Yes," the yeerk said cautiously.

The boy smiled, finally, and turned to face them. He, or rather the alien intelligence behind his eyes, looked at Dean as though he was only marginally more interesting than the curb and his shoe. "Fresh out of the pool, huh? I'm Kaspin two-eight-two-one."

‹Another one,› Dean groaned.

"Desca four-three-zero-two," the alien said. "You outrank me, then?"

"Sure do," the other controller said with a smirk. "You're heading off to your first training session now, aren't you? You got your host at that barbecue held at the school on Friday night."

"I did, yes," the yeerk said. "The school. Your host goes to the same one as mine?"

"Yeah," Kaspin said. "So. How are you finding it?"

Dean sensed wariness from the yeerk. "Well enough," it said.

Kaspin nodded, still watching Dean. Dean felt his feet shuffling, and the yeerk looked around.

"Can you tell me what the Sub-visser is like?" Dean's yeerk said eventually.

"Sub-visser 118, you mean?" Kaspin said. "She's not bad, as Sub-vissers go. She's very keen on discipline, but she's pretty reasonable. A human host, of course, and rumour has it that she's found favour with Visser Nineteen recently, so I don't know how much longer she's going to be bothering with training supervision."

"Ah," Desca said. "Thank you."

Evidently the two had no more to say to each other, because they stood in silence until the bus arrived. Dean's yeerk turned around so it could look back to the east – but the clouds had moved on, and no longer looked as spectacular. It sighed in regret and wonder.

‹I don't care about the bloody clouds!› Dean yelled.

The bus rolled up and settled at the stop with a hiss. "Return to Newlands street, thanks," the yeerk murmured, handing over his fare. Kaspin had buried himself in a seat halfway down the bus and was avoiding eye contact, so it slid them into the first pair of empty seats it could find. It gazed with apparent fascination at the streets and backyards as they slid past the window and slowly became wider and wider expanses of grass.

‹You monster!› Dean said. ‹I hate you! I hate you, you sick, evil...› He went on to call the yeerk things that his mother would have been shocked to hear him say, at great length. He'd never used them, himself - he'd never met anyone he thought deserved them. Until now.

It seemed to put a bit of a damper on the yeerk's enjoyment of the bus ride, at least.

‹Can't you be quiet?› it snapped. ‹How am I supposed to think with it doing that?›

‹No! No, I will not be quiet!› Dean said, outraged. ‹Did you just call me an it? Did you?›

Dean felt the same spike of frustration that he had when the yeerk had let the mask slip before his mother. It had made a mistake.

‹If you don't like me swearing at you, you can haul your slimy backside out of my head! I won't be quiet! You might as well get used to it!›

The yeerk turned Dean's face back towards the window, which made Dean wonder what expression his face had worn just now. It did its best to pretend that Dean didn't exist, until Dean ran out of steam and fell silent.

"Hey, new kid," Kaspin said abruptly a few minutes later. He was standing beside their seat. "This is our stop."

The yeerk stood and filed out of the bus, along with Kaspin and a couple of other people, and Dean found himself at the end of a long, weedy gravel driveway.

The bus pulled away. To either side of the driveway, there seemed to be empty blocks of land. The grass growing along the fences running beside it was high enough to smack Dean in the chest with waving seed-heads. At the end of the driveway, Dean could see a long, squat grey building.

The other passengers from the bus had set off immediately while the yeerk had been looking around.

"You get that shipment sorted out for the Sub-visser?" Dean heard one of them, an intense-looking young woman, ask another as they walked.

"No," he groaned. "Someone at the main pool's made a mistake somewhere, that's all I can say."

"I hope you..." Their conversation faded as they crunched down the driveway. Kaspin wasn't far behind them, and Dean's yeerk hurried to catch up with him.

"So, that's the facility, then?" it asked.

"Yep."

"It doesn't look very big from the surface. How many levels does it go underground?"

"Seven."

‹Seven levels underground!› Dean exclaimed. ‹What are you keeping in there?›

"Are you still undergoing training?"

Kaspin snorted. "No. I have duties of my own which are none of your business, Desca 4032."

Rebuked, the yeerk fell silent. When they reached the building, which was an unremarkable grey cement block, the other controller headed around the corner, for a door with a big red and white sign on it.

Employees only! Please report to reception!

A man was standing beside the door, wearing blank navy-blue clothes that had the look of a uniform. He gave them a bored glance and said nothing. Just above the handle, the door had a small keypad.

Kaspin tapped a five-digit number into the keypad and hauled the door open, and Dean and the yeerk followed him into the building. As the bright morning sunlight was cut off by the closing door, Dean had a distinct feeling of foreboding; without a doubt he was in enemy territory now.

The room inside was massive; Dean had assumed that the building had two stories, but it didn't. This one enormous room took up almost the entire floor plan and reached all the way up to the roof. It seemed all grey concrete and plaster, lit by white fluorescent lights. The plaster of the far wall was broken by doors and what looked like massive glass windows halfway up. The floor was smooth concrete marked all over with painted lines and, occasionally, what looked like scorch-marks.

People bustled about, crossing the wide empty concrete, but they did nothing to dispel the bleak impression. Far over in the left half of the building was a small crowd – a hundred or so people that lacked the sense of clinical purpose the others did.

Dean's legs moved, carrying him out into that hollow grey space and to the waiting group.

They were a mixed bunch. A lot seemed to be teenagers, but there were also adults – some that looked to be university age, others middle-aged, a couple of elderly. There were even a few children. Dean's eyes roamed from face to face, but evidently the yeerk didn't find what it was looking for. Probably the two controllers from yesterday, Dean thought. He felt from the yeerk a certainty that they would be there, though. It settled in to waiting, crossing Dean's arms over his chest. It was worried – the sort of generalised, low level worry that reminded Dean of taking exams and public speaking.

‹Nervous, are we?› Dean said. Painted on the nearby wall were a number of circles and dots in red – like targets. The wall itself was scorched and pitted all over.

A murmuring from the crowd alerted them that something was going on. "Quiet!" someone hissed. "It's Subvisser 118!"

"You be quiet, you fool," someone else hissed back.

Dean's yeerk turned around. Rather to its dismay, they were still on the fringes of the group – and they had quite a good view of Subvisser 118 as she strode directly towards them.

She didn't look like anything unusual to Dean. She had short black heels that clicked across the concrete as she walked; she wore a trendy red coat and a black skirt that reached halfway down her calves. She was surprisingly young, and had a glossy sheet of blonde hair to her shoulders.

Aldor/Ian was following her, pulling one of those two-wheeled things you got at airports loaded down with two blank grey crates. He didn't look very pleased about it.

The Subvisser came to a stop in front of the group and faced them with two decisive clicks, and surveyed them with her hands on her hips. The group was dead silent; nobody so much as coughed.

"My newly hosted brother yeerks," she said. "Welcome to Earth, and welcome to facility sixteen." She spoke without smiling; her words had a delicate tilt of sarcasm on the words 'brother yeerks'. Her eyes scanned them, lingering on particular faces. "I am Sub-visser one-one-eight. I'm in charge of giving you sorry rookies some very basic training in firearms, facility procedures and general knowledge. You'll be in my tender care for the next ten weeks. After that you will be assigned regular duties." She took her hands off her hips and began to walk, slowly, in a straight line in front of them. The click-click of her shoes sounded oddly loud and yet oddly small. "If you have any problems, you do not bother me with them. I have better things to do. Talk to your assigned coordinators, such as Aldor here."

She flicked one hand at Aldor in a careless gesture as she passed in front of him. He said nothing, just stood there with his hands behind his back.

"Bring the weapons you are being issued now to all your training sessions and to all your regular duties. If you lose them, damage them, or allow any humans to see them, you will be punished." She stopped, and her eyes passed over Dean where he stood on the edge. The yeerk was careful not to move a muscle, but Dean could feel how its anxiety ratcheted up a few notches.

Her eyes swung away from them. "Collect your dracon beams from Aldor."

Nobody moved - nobody wanted to be the first to step forward. Subvisser 118 raised her eyes to the ceiling silently.

Eventually somebody stepped up, and they all filed forward to Aldor, who had levered the top off one of the crates. Aldor showed no flicker of recognition towards Desca; he unceremoniously handed Desca a heavy black object and turned to the next person.

The yeerk backed away, lifting up the other hand to support the weapon; it was surprisingly heavy. It examined it with rising interest. Once it took the gun out of the holster, they saw that it had a blocky, thick body and blunted ends. There was a trigger, and a sort of a guard for the hand that made a smooth curve along its underside. It was dull black all over.

It was made for a much larger hand than Dean's. When the yeerk fitted his hand to it, his fingers reached the trigger, but not comfortably or securely.

Dean could feel a smile on his mouth. The gun made the yeerk feel excited, and powerful. There was a sense of... beginnings.

Dean didn't like it. ‹What lunatic decided that giving you a gun was a good idea?› he said.

"Hey," someone murmured nearby. "Somebody's late."

Desca turned around to look, and saw a dishevelled-looking controller, a young man in a sports jersey, sidling up to the side of the group. While Desca had been examining its own gun, all of the rest of the crowd had collected theirs. Now the latecomer gave them all a panicky glance.

"So kind of you to join us at last," the Subvisser said icily. She had picked up a weapon of her own, and tapped her fingers on it impatiently. "Collect your weapon. I don't have all day."

The latecomer was white, but he squared his shoulders and weaved his way to the front. Aldor, looking tight-lipped, held out a gun to him... but the Subvisser forestalled him with one hand.

"You are late," she said. "Thank you for volunteering for the demonstration." She brought her gun up in one hand with a single fluid motion.

"No!" the young man said, backing away a few steps. Dean and the yeerk caught a glimpse of his horrified face and one upraised arm.

The Subvisser's gun made a loud TSEEEW noise and a thin beam of red light connected with the young man's chest. He fell backwards with a strangled cry and hit the floor.

‹Jesus! She shot him!› Dean cried silently. ‹Is he dead?›

‹I don't know,› the yeerk said tensely.

Subvisser 118 brought the gun down. "Look at your weapons," she said. "You will note that there are ten settings. Setting 1 is the weakest setting. It is very painful, and a correctly aimed shot will stun the target, but it is not lethal."

The young man moved, propped himself up on his elbows. ‹There, he's not,› Desca said, relieved. ‹Be quiet.›

Subvisser 118 walked over to him slowly, and pointed the gun at him again – this time at his head. He stopped moving.

"The highest setting," she said conversationally, "Causes almost instantaneous death. At close range it can incinerate flesh and leave barely a trace behind."

The group was silent. Dean could feel how fervently glad his yeerk was that it wasn't them out there. For himself, he felt almost sick. That person out there, at the mercy of the Subvisser – it wasn't just a yeerk, that was a human being out there. A person not so much older than Dean, with a freckled face blanched white, who had absolutely no choice in being there and no way to get out. Dean had never seen anyone die before.

"You're not looking at your weapons," the Subvisser remarked. There was a flurry of activity as everybody examined their guns carefully.

There was, indeed, a row of 10 settings, on one side above the trigger. Currently the slider was resting above 1. Desca flicked it up onto ten, and then back to one. A tiny red light was glowing next to the slider; the battery charge, Dean supposed.

"You may not change your gun from weakest setting until ordered to," the Subvisser said. "Anybody who feels like being late will get the honour of assisting your teachers." She stepped back and withdrew her gun. "The continuation of your weapons training, however, is not on the agenda until later today. For the remainder of the morning, you will be shown this facility and educated in procedures."

She addressed the controller on the floor in front of her with a sneer. "Get up, moron, and consider yourself lucky I'm in a good mood today. Everyone, with me." She tossed her dracon beam at Aldor's chest, smoothed her hands over her hair in a very feminine gesture, and set off towards the wall with the doors. The crowd of controllers parted like a flock of startled birds, and then followed in her wake. They were eerily silent. Nobody looked back at Aldor and the latecomer.

Desca fumbled to put the belt and holster on, shoved the dracon beam into the holster, and went with the crowd.

Dean was relieved that the latecomer hadn't died. The message had been received, even more clearly than at the meeting yesterday. Mess up and you die. I could kill you if I wanted, and nobody would have a problem with it. Obviously, nobody was going to berate the Sub-visser for the injury of one of her subordinates. He wondered what would have happened if nobody had been late – would the Sub-visser have pulled somebody out of the crowd for some inconsequential mistake for her 'demonstration'?

More to the point, from Dean's point of view, the yeerks obviously had no problem damaging and even killing host bodies.

‹You know what this means?› he demanded angrily, addressing the alien. ‹When you fuck up, I'm potentially going to get incinerated by your psychopathic bitch of a boss. Fantastic! We are both toast.›

That bothered the yeerk. Disgruntled, it adjusted the hang of the dracon beam and focused on keeping its head down.

‹You look ridiculous,› Dean said. ‹Like a little kid playing soldier. I am so dead.›


	4. Chapter 4

What followed was one of the most boring mornings of Dean's life. The Subvisser gave them a short tour of the facility. Apparently the big open space on the above-ground level was used to store some sort of vehicle for repairs; the phrase 'bug fighter' was used.

At least one of the lower levels was another cavernous open space, this one filled with crates of...  _stuff,_ and human forklifts and other machinery. Controllers tapped away at computer screens or banks of controls as the Sub-visser click-clicked past terminals, and more edged past her trailing group of inductees in the corridors. Dean and the yeerk distinctly heard conversations starting back up behind them.

The Sub-visser didn't stop talking, delivering a non-stop list of procedures and rules in a bored drawl. The dullness would have been absolute if it wasn't for the occasional brief mention of combat protocols, dracon cannons, and promises of punishment for the slightest infraction.

Dean quickly stopped paying attention to her words, and instead drifted into his own thoughts.

‹Isn't anybody going to give you a hard copy of this stuff?› Dean said, after an off-hand mention of a pass code. ‹How are you supposed to remember it all?› The yeerk didn't respond.

‹I suppose,› Dean said, ‹They can't really send employee handbooks home with them all. Although it would be nice if they did, then I would have proof that this is going on.› He allowed himself to drift into an imagining of what he could do: if he could only get rid of the yeerk for a short time, he could take evidence to the police, or maybe to a politician or someone in power. They wouldn't believe in aliens, of course, but if he could only convince someone to come here and check the place out...

... then they would just leave it with an alien slug of their own, he admitted to himself. They'd go back and reassure everybody that there was nothing wrong, and nobody would know that they weren't the same person who'd gone in. Nothing would happen.

And that was even putting aside the problems of getting rid of the yeerk and finding some evidence. The gun was evidence, he supposed. If he could convince people it wasn't a toy. If he could gain control of his body for long enough to show it to someone. If he could prevent the yeerk from taking over again and making excuses to cover it up. Dean refused to give in to despair; he'd only been in this situation for a few days. He'd find a way out eventually. He wouldn't give up. He wouldn't.

There was a barely-restrained sigh of frustration from the yeerk. He was annoying it by thinking too loudly, he supposed.

‹Not interrupting anything, am I?› he said. ‹Because God knows, that would be just awful.›

‹Be silent,› it ordered. ‹I need to remember all of this, and that is only made more difficult when you insist on talking to me. As you so loudly pointed out earlier, if I make any mistakes you'll suffer along with me. Even you should be able to see that it is in your best interests to be as quiet as possible and not distract me, so as to minimise those mistakes.›

‹Oh really?› Dean sneered. The smug little bastard... he hated the way it talked. ‹I think I'll decide what's in 'my own best interests' for myself, thanks, I don't need something like you to condescendingly tell me.›

‹You already said that you don't want to be punished along with me. You are only arguing with yourself if you...›

‹Changed my mind,› Dean said, seething. There was no way he was going to follow any sort of order from the slug. ‹You know what? I've decided something. I think I'm going to go right ahead distracting you and interrupting you! I'm going to actively  _try_  to make you fuck up!›

‹What! That is the – You would not!›

‹Watch me!› Dean said. ‹Sure, I'll get hurt too, but you know what? I don't care! It's a fair price to pay! I'll gladly eat dracon or whatever you call those toy rayguns if it means you get them as well!›

The yeerk was filled with disbelief. ‹I did not know humans were such irrational things,› it said after a moment or two. ‹You will change your mind again soon enough. ›

Maybe Dean was being irrational; he wasn't so angry that he couldn't tell. He just didn't care. All he knew was that this was the right decision.

‹I wouldn't hold your breath,› Dean said. ‹So, how much vital induction material have you missed in the course of this little conversation? At a rough guess?›

The yeerk's attention snapped back to the Sub-visser anxiously. It was actually pretty funny, when it reacted like that.

‹Well, I know how much,› Dean said. ‹Not. Enough.›

***

"Desca," Tasnik murmured under her breath at them later. "You blind or something?"

The yeerk jerked his head to the side. They were sitting at a computer terminal – the Sub-Visser had handed them over to someone else with an air of finally being finished with a stunningly boring and unnecessary chore. Yeerk computer terminals, much to Dean's interest, seemed to have a touch screen interface as well as a more humdrum QWERTY-style keyboard. He found it so interesting that he'd stopped loudly working out times-tables in his head, as he'd been doing for the last few hours. Dean knew of few things more distracting when you were trying to focus on boring, complicated information than somebody else doing sums out loud. Anyway, nobody was trying to teach the new controllers anything at the moment, and he was getting a little tired of it.

"Tas!" the yeerk whispered. "I didn't see you."

The yeerk that currently looked like a blonde teenager shook her head. "I know you didn't, moron! What's the matter with you?"

"I was trying to focus," Desca said.

"You looked preoccupied."

"That's because I  _was_. Preoccupied with my current duties."

"No, idiot, you... Ugh. Never mind." Tasnik sighed. "Did you see that controller that was late?" she asked in a low voice.

‹Tell her no,› Dean advised. ‹We were too busy picking our nose. What sort of question is that?›

"Of course," Desca replied. It glanced over and met Tasnik's eyes, pale blue and mascara-rimmed. "Did you expect anything different?"

"No. The Sub-vissser doesn't seem too bad, don't you think?"

"I wouldn't get too attached, though," Desca said. "Someone told me that she might be due for a promotion soon. Wonder who we'll get then?"

Tasnik shrugged. "Shouldn't matter too much. Training isn't for very long anyway."

"Where's Indiss?" Desca asked, looking around the room.

"Over there," Tasnik said. They saw her, intent on a computer screen in the far corner. She didn't glance up. "Listen, I can talk to her tomorrow, but I can't talk to you. We need to go back to the pool tomorrow some time; 5 o'clock human time?"

The yeerk considered. Dean's mother would not be home until late that evening, so it could really do whatever it liked as long as it was back in time. "4 is better."

"Right. 4 in the pool, then."

***

TSSSSSEEEEEW!

A finger of red light flicked into existence, stretched across space, and left a black mark on the wall. The yeerk smiled as it brought Dean's hand down. It thought this was pretty cool.

It marvelled at the transient colour, too. Red, bright red, in shining lines all over the practice range. Even after a day and a half walking around in Dean's body, it still wasn't used to it. It still stopped and let its gaze linger on things that were particularly bright, or patterned, or... anything, really.

‹Yeah, great. Before you start admiring how cool you are with your shiny gun, look – you missed. By a  _mile_.  _Again_. You're really bad at this.›

The yeerk thought, sulkily, that this was only the first afternoon. There was plenty of time to improve, and any failings at this point were really the host's rather than its.

‹Heard that.›

The yeerk jerked its thoughts out of reach with badly-controlled frustration. ‹Stop that. You can't do that.›

‹Why not?›

‹Because ... No. No, I'm not going to start talking to the host.› The yeerk took aim again, steadying the gun with both of Dean's hands and squinting at the painted target.

As his fingers squeezed down on the trigger, Dean pushed suddenly for control of his arms, forcing them sideways jerkily.

TSEEW!

The beam went wildly off course, crossing over several other people's lines of sight, and the yeerk had to bundle the overlarge weapon closer to keep from dropping it. The girl beside them gave them a funny look and edged a little further away.

The yeerk fumed silently and rearranged its hold on the weapon.

‹How dare – that's not supposed to happen!›

‹OK, I admit it. That one really was my fault.›

There was a wordless exclamation of anger from the alien – at least, no words that Dean recognised.

Dean ticked off another victory for his campaign of distraction.  _I was right, yesterday_ , he thought.  _Even if I can only get the upper hand for a few seconds, if I time it right, those seconds can mean a lot. I can make its life hell, just like it's making mine. Yeah._

The yeerk was wound-up and tense for the rest of the practice session, until finally they were dismissed. Tasnik and Indiss got onto a different bus together; the yeerk was faintly envious.

The yeerk sighed deeply and closed Dean's eyes for the bus ride home. It had been a very long day. Bewilderment and uneasiness leaked across into Dean's mind despite the alien's efforts to keep him out. Dean tried to take its turbulent state of mind as a triumph – which it was, really – but that was difficult when he was feeling much the same way.

Given some time to think, Dean doubted, now, that the Sub-visser would really have killed that guy at the beginning of the day. If nothing else, explaining to families why high schoolers sometimes disappeared the day after joining the Sharing's inner circle would be tricky, and secrecy seemed to be pretty important to them.

It didn't really matter, though – what mattered was that for a couple of seconds, he'd believed she would do it, and clearly the yeerks all had as well. She had only been trying to make a point.

The yeerk was dubious about that even now, Dean could tell. It still thought she might have done it.

It was getting dark and chilly by the time Dean finally turned the corner into his street and walked to his house. The yeerk sighed softly. And now it was back to pretending to be Dean. It supposed it should start rehearsing the story for what they'd been doing all day.

The yeerk climbed up the short steps and opened the door.

"I'm home, Mum," it yelled, quickly ducking down the hallway to his room. It hastily shoved the dracon beam into a drawer and ducked back out again to greet his mother in the kitchen.

"You're late home," she said, surprised. "How was your day?" She came up to enfold him in a brief hug. The yeerk made Dean hug her back, tipping his chin up to avoid her head.

"Great!" the yeerk said, feigning enthusiasm. "We were cleaning up the school after the barbeque on Friday, as well as the actual meeting." It had told Dean's mother that the 'meeting' it was going to was at the school. "It was pretty gross over there. And I spent a while just hanging out with some of the Sharing guys after we were finished our work. We had a lot of fun."

"Oh, really?" she said. "What did you guys do?"

"Oh, you know," it said vaguely. "Just hanging out."

"Right. Hanging out," she said, rolling her eyes. "Anyway. I thought we'd have chicken satay for dinner tonight. Is that OK?"

"Yeah, great," the yeerk said.

"Do you have homework to do?"

"Muuum," it groaned. "I did it yesterday. Stop asking me all the time, I'm old enough to manage my own homework."

"I  _would_  think that," she said pointedly, "If I didn't keep finding you up at midnight on Sunday nights doing it."

Dean couldn't really find fault with that. To be fair, that maths assignment had been really hard.

They usually ate around the small kitchen table, when they ate together at all. They never bothered with a tablecloth. Usually meals like this would be quite loud and cheerful, particularly if Dean had been out doing something all day, but tonight it was weirdly silent except for the chinking of cutlery. This was one of Dean's favourite dishes, too. The yeerk enjoyed it.

"You're very quiet, Dean," his mother said

"Huh?" the yeerk made Dean look up. "Oh. Just tired, I guess." It smiled.

"Hmm," she said, looking at him. "So, why did you decide to go to this fundraising meeting?"

The yeerk shrugged, poking at the rice on the plate with the fork. "Ian asked me to."

"Yeah, but I thought you said you were tired of the Sharing. You said you were tired of it, Friday before the barbecue." She forked a piece of chicken into her mouth and watched Dean, chewing.

"I, uh..." Dean could tell that the yeerk was floundering. "Guess I changed my mind. The Sharing's not so bad. Ian said he really needed my help with... um. Planning. And... stuff."

His mother's brow wrinkled as she looked at him in surprise. "Really? I thought you said that they expected you to become a full member if you were going to stick around."

"Um." For once, Dean was happy that he'd never been very good at lying to his mother. The yeerk didn't know what to do, and it didn't really have any skills to draw from Dean. "I, uh... I am a full member now." It smiled weakly. "Sorry I didn't talk it over with you."

She frowned. "Oh. Why? You were all set to say no." Her eyes narrowed. "What's going on, Dean?"

‹Yes!› Dean said triumphantly. ‹I knew it! I knew you wouldn't sneak this by under her nose! She knows me better than this!›

"Nothing," the yeerk stammered. "Nothing's going on, Mum. Chill out." It smiled. "I just changed my mind. I went to the meeting after all, just to make Ian happy, and it actually sounded like a lot of fun."

"Uh huh," Dean's mother said suspiciously.

‹She's not buying it.› Dean laughed.

‹Didn't she ever teach you that it's rude to interrupt other people's conversations?› the yeerk said absently. ‹Shhh.›

"Don't worry, Mum," it said lightly. "This is the Sharing we're talking about. What do you think is going to happen? Everybody knows they're all about community spirit and helping people make something of themselves. You should be happy I joined."

"It's not that I'm not  _happy_ about it, Dean. Although I would have liked it if you'd asked me, first." She looked exasperated. "I just don't understand  _why_."

"It sounded like fun," the yeerk said, again. "And, you know... it's a chance to make a difference. A chance to really go somewhere – the Sharing could help me do all sorts of stuff. I'll be part of a network of people, all working together for common goals."

‹You're making it sound like a cult. Nice work.›

The yeerk seethed with annoyance, but it refrained from saying anything to Dean. Instead it smiled blandly at his mother, shovelled up the last of the meal, and stood up. It collected his plate and cutlery and took them to the sink. "My turn to wash up tonight."

"Getting a start on your new, team-oriented outlook already, I see," his mother said. "I'm not going to complain."

She took her dishes to the sink as well, and clasped Dean on his shoulder as she passed. To his surprise, Dean felt a surge of emotion at that.  _Come back_ , he wanted to cry after her as she walked away.  _I need your help! I need you!_ He couldn't just reach out and touch her anymore, and he couldn't talk to her. He was so lost, and she didn't even know.

‹She knows something's up,› he said, trying to cover his distress. The yeerk knew everything that he thought and felt; it was humiliating. The alien was watching him cry for his mother like a little kid. ‹She's smart. She wasn't fooled by that display of absolutely pathetic lying. She's just decided to drop the subject for a while.›

The yeerk didn't say anything, but Dean felt it dismiss his opinion. It slid the dishes out of the way and turned on the hot tap. It was frustrated that it had volunteered to do them; it was exhausted. Or rather, Dean's body was exhausted. He didn't think being tired from physical activity was something the yeerk had really experienced before.

‹You'll see,› Dean continued. ‹You were wrong when you said that you could imitate me completely. For a while there I was scared, because it seemed like you were a halfway competent invader, but you couldn't impersonate your way out of a wet paper bag.›

‹Shut up,› the yeerk said tiredly. ‹Do you ever stop?›

‹Thinking? No,› Dean said. ‹ Must be hard for you to understand, I know. You're pathetic. You're a failure at everything. ›

‹You are delusional if you think she's going to guess the truth,› the yeerk said. ‹I understand that most humans don't believe in aliens. How do you think she's going to find out? Will you tell her?› It laughed cruelly. ‹Wait, you can't. You can't because you're mine. You are totally powerless. You are a sad little voice inside your own head, and no matter how shrilly you rant and rave about how ' _You can't do this to me, you can't, my mother will get you!'_ that's not going to change.› It imitated Dean's voice in a whiny tone, and accompanied it with an exaggerated impression of his feelings just a couple of seconds ago. Fear, confusion, the desire for somebody to come and save him, the need to run to his mother and bury his head in her shoulder like a five year old - the yeerk threw them all into his face with a gloating edge of amusement, making Dean recoil and shrink in on himself with shame. ‹You'd better get used to this,  _host_. You can't do anything.›

‹I managed to do something today,› he said. The alternative to goading the yeerk was to crumble; and he would not do that. Besides, he could definitely feel an undercurrent to the yeerk's words. ‹Do you know what I think? I think that you're trying to convince yourself with this gloating as much as me.›

That seemed to hit home. ‹Believe what you like,› it snapped. ‹Just do it as  _unobtrusively_  as possible.›

***

The yeerk went to bed as early as it could without arousing even more suspicion from Dean's mother. The sheets were cool and clean, and the temptation to let himself sink into sleep was strong. He had different plans, though.

‹Once the rest of the world figures out what's going on, you yeerks aren't going to stand a chance.›

The yeerk sighed heavily and closed Dean's eyes. Colours danced against the darkness inside his lids. It rolled over and pressed a pillow against his face, but it couldn't make them go away.

‹We'll find a way to get you out of people's heads, and then we'll kill you. We'll send you whimpering back to whatever planet you came from.›

‹Look. Human. I'm tired. You're tired. So, for once, will you just obey me and be quiet?› It was almost a whine, the alien's shallow patience exhausted in the hours since dinner.

‹Obey you? Never,› Dean said. ‹You might be able to force my body to do what you want but you can't shut me up! So I'm going to keep on talking, and shouting, and  _bothering_  you in any way that I possibly can until you get the hell out of my head!›

‹That's not going to happen!› the yeerk said. ‹How long does it take for you to get this? I'm here for good. You are finished. There is absolutely nothing you can do to change... anything at all, really! So shut up and go to sleep!›

‹You're wrong,› Dean said. His eyes ached with tiredness. It really would be good to sleep. ‹Because, hey, guess what? You've just let me know that I'm annoying you! If there's nothing concrete I can do, I'll settle for driving you crazy with sleep deprivation.›

The alien groaned. It shifted onto Dean's back and scrubbed at tired eyes. ‹I will ignore you, then,› it said tightly. ‹It shouldn't be difficult.›

Dean laughed. ‹Challenge accepted! How about a song?›

‹You're not.›

‹... Ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety nine bottles of beer! You take one down, pass it around, ninety eight bottles of beer on the wall...›

 


	5. Chapter 5

The alarm clock woke them in the morning, so they must have slept eventually. But Dean was pretty sure it hadn't been until the early hours of the morning. He'd sung every song that came into his head – even the silly ones, and the ones he hated. Even the ones of his mother's that he always whined about.

BEE-BEE-BEE-BEEP! BEE-BEE-BEE-BEEP!

Desca groaned. Dean's mind was fogged with tiredness, and he had a headache. Every fibre of his body resisted the inexorable pull into wakefulness.

Dean always kept his alarm clock on his desk across the room, so it couldn't be turned off from the bed; Desca picked up a pillow and slung it in that direction in the vague hope that that would stop the noise.

BEE-BEE-BEE-BEEP! BEE-BEE-BEE-BEEP!

BEE-BEE-BEE-BEEP! BEE-BEE-BEE-BEEP!

"Aauugh," Desca moaned aloud, but quietly. "I don't have to get up... do I?"

‹Sure do,› Dean said sleepily. ‹Come on, up and at'em, slug boy!›

BEE-BEE-BEE-BEEP! BEE-BEE-BEE-BEEP!

Desca gave a wordless snarl of frustration. It sat up in a sweaty tangle of bedclothes, stumbled across the room and picked up the alarm clock.

‹How do I make this  _shandril_ thing shut up?› it said.

‹Is that a yeerk swear word?› Dean asked, still bleary.

‹Just – tell me how to turn it off!›

‹Big round button on top. Hit it.›

Desca hit the button and the alarm stopped mid 'BEEP'. It threw the clock to the floor and went back to bed.

‹Oh, no, you don't,› Dean said. ‹Mum will wake you up. You'll see.›

"Dean!"

‹Right on cue. Heh heh.›

"Dean! Don't you go back to sleep! I'm not driving you to school this morning if you're running late!"

‹This is ridiculous,› Desca complained. ‹I don't know what's wrong with you.›

‹Awww, what's wrong?› Dean asked. ‹Somebody didn't get their beauty sleep last night? Poor baby.›

‹You're the one who's tired! More than I am. Why do you consider this a victory?›

Dean gave a mental shrug. ‹I told you yesterday: I consider it my mission now to make your life as miserable as I can possibly make it. All other concerns are secondary.›

The yeerk had seemed to momentarily forget to look through Dean's memories, Dean thought. He'd asked how to turn the alarm off instead of ferreting around in his mind.

The yeerk ate breakfast and dressed grumpily, rubbing sleep-gunk out of Dean's eyes, and set off for school. This was going to be a very strange day.

 

***

The yeerk, weirdly enough, cheered up somewhat during classes. It listened to his biology teacher with interest, albeit confused interest. English confused it even more, minus the interest.

It delved into his memory constantly. Simply getting context for one average school day required an upsetting amount of digging through his mind like it was a cluttered desk drawer. Dean grew extremely sick of screaming for it to get out, and it achieved absolutely nothing.

Dean had some hopes of his maths class. He sat next to a friend, Ryan, there, and if he could trip the yeerk up enough times Ryan might realise something was up. Maybe he could get sent to the sick bay. Maybe if he could convince enough people he was sick, he could go to the hospital, and there they would run some tests, discover the yeerk somehow, and then... and then... he could never figure out what would happen then. But it had to be better than this.

The yeerk held him back with ease as it slid into his habitual seat. "Hey Ryan," it said brightly, crushing Dean's attempts to shove the desk away violently.

Ryan grunted. "You're way too happy for maths on a Monday morning," he complained.

The teacher set them all problems to do from the textbook. The yeerk looked at them, and began to sift through Dean's knowledge again. For a second Dean managed to make his fingers slip on the pencil, but it didn't last long.

For the next few minutes, as the yeerk studiously solved the first equation, all Dean could think was: it was so unfair. It had taken Dean years of work to get that knowledge, to be able to do these problems. And all the yeerk had to do was soak up his memories and it could do them just as well in a matter of minutes. It wasn't fair.

The yeerk reached the end of the problem smugly. It circled the answer, as was Dean's habit, and sat back to look at it.

‹I don't know what you're so satisfied with yourself for,› Dean complained. ‹You didn't do that, I basically did. My memories did it for you. Cheat.›

‹My memories, now,› the yeerk mused, almost to itself. ‹My skills. All mine.›

‹Argh! Fuck! I hate you!›

The yeerk turned the page and started the next question.

***

The yeerk became restless in the as the day went on. In the afternoon classes, impatience made it glance frequently at the clock; it wanted something, though Dean had no idea what that could be.

_Oh, of course,_  he realised during the final period, when he caught the edge of a thought from the yeerk.  _It's going to that pool thing after school!_  At least he'd finally find out what it was.

When they arrived back home, the yeerk made itself a snack and then set off immediately on Dean's bicycle for the shopping centre where the entrances were hidden.

The yeerk slid the lock on the door of the disabled bathroom closed, and looked around for the entrance. The metal panel above the railing slid away from the wall easily; behind it were a keypad and a round button that wasn't labelled. Desca keyed in a set of numbers and punched the button, then stepped back.

With a hissing noise, one wall of the tiny room slid back. Behind it was a narrow, badly lit concrete stairway that disappeared down to the left.

If he could have, Dean would have shivered as the yeerk stepped through into the secret passage. This was worse than the training centre. The stairway was practically a tunnel.

The yeerk turned his head to the side as the door hissed back into place behind them, leaving them in darkness. In a few seconds Dean's eyes adjusted; there was a little light, dim and colourless, seeping up the stairs. Enough to see the stairs by.

_Lucky I'm not claustrophobic,_  he thought shakily. He tried to keep himself focussed. Somewhere under here was this 'pool' they kept talking about. He needed to keep his eyes peeled and find out as much as possible about what it was.  _Knowledge is power_ , he told himself.  _Once you know what's going on, then you'll be able to come up with something to do about it._

The yeerk set off down the stairs. It was looking forward to this a lot, whatever it was. Dean could feel how it yearned towards... something. That same impatience he'd sensed at school. Its footsteps were rapid on the dirty concrete.

Dean wondered what could be so enticing to it. Whatever it was, it would be something horrible, he was sure. Something horrible he'd have to be involved in.

After a long while, the concrete stairway opened out into a larger tunnel. This one was bare rock and without stairs. Dean sort of wished the yeerk would slow down; he was tired. It was an awful feeling to be out of breath and yet not able to do anything about it. Besides...

_I hear something_ , Dean thought.

Drifting up the tunnel with a gust of dank air was the sound of human voices. And then, faint but blood-chilling, he heard a human scream.

Dean huddled into the back of his own mind. ‹Oh no,› he whispered.  _This is gonna be bad, isn't it? What are they doing to people?_

He wished so badly that he would just wake up now and find out this was just a dream. But he was getting used to the idea by now that it wasn't going to happen.

They rounded a bend in the rough-hewn tunnel and walked into light – harsh white light. The yeerk blinked rapidly and looked around and up – the light was coming from somewhere much higher than Dean was expecting. They saw something like a floodlight that lit up the area immediately around the tunnel exit, revealing an uneven-looking stony floor and some bright yellow construction vehicles. The yeerk continued, grit crunching lightly under the soles of Dean's shoes, into an open space. They gazed about together, taking in the sight of the Yeerk Pool.

If he'd been expecting anything, Dean would have expected something like the lower levels of the facility they'd been to yesterday – blank, smooth grey warehouses and offices. It was nothing like that. It was a cavern the size of his school oval, with raw-looking stone everywhere. Dean could see other lights, more permanent-looking ones than the floodlight that lit his immediate area, fixed in the stone ceiling, shining down onto the buildings. It looked as if he was in some sort of half-constructed area, while the rest of the cavern was completed.

The buildings were in a cluster against the walls, across on the other shore of an irregularly-shaped pool set into the floor of the cavern. It was clearly the centrepiece of the cavern. Their entrance was a short distance from its outermost edge, and Dean could hear a babble of conversation, including a sudden incongruous peal of laughter, coming across it. A muddy smell permeated the air.

_I guess that'd be 'the pool',_  Dean thought.  _I was imagining something a bit more... high-tech._  This seemed to be just a really big hole in the ground full of dirty water.

And then Dean forgot all about the pool, because something out of a science fiction film had just moved into his line of sight, out across the pool. Two of them – green, reptilian, with lean limbs and spiked tails. They held a struggling person between them; he looked like a child hanging from their hands.

‹ _What the hell are those_?› he demanded, reflexively trying to back away.

Apparently just because he wanted the opposite, the yeerk began moving again, walking towards the pool. It watched with detached interest as the two green creatures continued down the metal pier that stretched out over the pool, lifting the struggling man's feet off the ground as they pulled him along. Dean watched too, helpless, as the man was forced down onto the pier with his head over the edge.

_He's getting a yeerk,_  Dean realised.  _That pool... it must be full of yeerks!_  He viewed the pool with fresh revulsion.  _Oh, that's so disgusting. How bloody many of them are there?!_

‹Of course it is,› the yeerk said vaguely. ‹What did you think a pool was for? Idiot. Now hush.›

It picked up the pace, heading purposefully around the curve of the pool. When Dean made an effort to push away his own fear and disgust, to stop dwelling on it, he could feel the yeerk's hunger for that pool.

‹Hunger! Is that it?› Dean said, finally putting his finger on the feeling he'd been catching from it. ‹You're hungry? What do you eat?› Suddenly, hope struck him as he realised that they were, indeed, heading for the pier. Was the yeerk going to leave?

Dean and the yeerk nervously approached one of the spiky green creatures. It was  _so tall_. Its neck curved gracefully up and over, holding a lizard-like head with deep alien eyes. The yeerk tipped Dean's head back to look up at it, awed - it had flat green plates extending from its elbows and knees and just above its claw-like hands. Their edges looked sharp.

The alien glared down at them. After a second, it jerked its head at the pier. "Well?" it growled. The yeerk flinched, and hastened forward again.

_It's going to leave_ , Dean prayed – he couldn't remember the last time he'd prayed.  _It's going to go away, it's going to leave me alone...Oh please God it's going to leave!_

The green alien walked behind them, heavy clawed feet scraping the metal of the pier. It said something that Dean didn't understand to the other one, who responded with a loud, guttural laugh.

The yeerk walked Dean to the end of the pier and knelt. The green alien grabbed Dean's shoulders with huge clawed hands, and steadied him as he was leant over the edge; grey water slapped underneath him as a wave went by. It smelt, a strange unpleasant mineral smell.

Maybe he was only imagining it, but Dean thought he could feel the yeerk letting go of him. Like an octopus slipping away from a rock, one tentacle after another slipping off. His ear felt numb, and then sticky.

He looked at the water, and caught his first actual sight of a yeerk – something long, slick and grey, that bobbed near the surface and then arrowed away with a tiny splash.

He couldn't believe it. He was alone again. He realised that he had just moved his head, to look at the water –  _he_  had moved it. He twisted his shoulders and reached out to grab the side of the pier, but was then wrenched to his feet by the spiky alien. It hurt.

He tried to brace his feet against the floor, but there was no use. He was bundled back along the pier. The alien shoved him to an area he hadn't noticed before, beside the piers, that was full of metal cages tall enough to hold people. It opened the door to one of them and shoved him into it with a hand on his back.

Dean sprawled on the floor, painfully. He rolled over and got to his knees, irrational elation filling him. He was free. Actually free. He could move! He ran his hands through his hair and stared at them.

"Steady there, kiddo," someone said. A hand rested on his shoulder, steadying him. There was someone already in this cage – a woman with blue jeans and hair scraped back into a pony-tail. "You all right?"

"Yeah," Dean said, and nearly laughed to hear his own voice. He stared around. "What's going on here? What is this place?"

"The yeerk pool," the woman said.

"What's it do? Why are we here?"

"Your yeerk didn't tell you?"

Dean snorted. "It doesn't tell me anything except how futile resistance is." He stood and looked around. Besides the ponytailed woman, a tired-looking man was the only other person in his particular enclosure, although the cages were close enough to reach your hands through the bars and touch others.

"New host?" the man asked. Sympathy shone in his eyes for a second as he looked at Dean, and then he buried his face in his hands.

"The yeerks need to come here to feed," the woman explained. "They don't actually eat, you know. They soak up this radiation, but for some reason they need to be swimming around in that water out there for them to absorb it." She waved her hand at the pool.

"They leave for a couple of hours every three days," the man said. "During those hours we're free of them." He looked around bitterly. "A little free, in any case."

"Every three days?" Dean said. "That often? And we're here? Every time?"

"Yes," the woman confirmed.

Hope bloomed in Dean's chest. This was so much better than he'd thought! Not only did the yeerks have to leave, but there was an opportunity for cooperation with other people!

"Oh, thank God," he said, grinning. "I thought... I didn't realise they had to leave! They have to do it every three days? What happens if they don't?"

_At last_ , he thought.  _A weakness. They have a weakness. And if they have weaknesses we can beat them._

"They die," the man said, matter-of-factly.

"Hah," Dean said. "I thought I was going to have to get brain surgery or something to get the slimy thing out! But they leave on their own? You can make them leave by starving them?"

"Yes," the man said. He eyed Dean mournfully and sighed. Dean wondered what his problem was.

Dean paced; it felt far too good to be able to move again for him to sit still like the other guy was doing. As he looked out across the rest of the cages, he saw that many of the others were doing the same. Some were sitting; some were crying. Somebody kept sobbing, loudly, over and over.

"There are so many," he said. "I didn't realise..."

"Hey, you know what I heard?" someone called quietly from the cage beside theirs.

"What?" the woman with the ponytail said, going up to the bars. Dean followed her. The man in their cage just sat.

"I heard," the man in the other cage said, "That there's been some difficulties on that front recently." He glanced at the green aliens nervously as he spoke, and Dean found himself copying him. Were they allowed to talk?

"Like what?" the woman said softly.

"It was malfunctioning the other day. One of the other slugs was telling mine; they're not making a big deal about it, but it was. There was talk of sending to the main pool for some new spare components."

"What was malfunctioning?" Dean asked.

The man glanced at him. "New, huh?" he said. "The Kandrona. You know anything about that?"

"No."

"It's a generator – a machine that makes the radiation they eat," the man explained, glancing at the green aliens again. "Kandrona rays, Kandrona generator."

"Do you think it could be sabotage?" the woman said eagerly. "A resistance movement? I heard there's one of those in the main pool."

He shook his head. "I don't think so. Machines break. It happens." He shrugged. "Just thought you might be interested, Jo. The yeerk didn't want me to spread it about, which is reason enough. Hey, you." He looked at Dean. "You're a school kid. I've seen a few of you about tonight; did they have some sort of raid or whatever?"

"The Sharing," Dean admitted. "A whole bunch of us were inducted into it last night."

"Fucking Sharing," he muttered viciously.

The conversation seemed to be over; the man dropped his hands from the bars and wandered off. The woman went and sat down next to the tired-looking man.

Not much later, the ponytailed woman was taken out of the cages. One of the green aliens reached in with one muscled, bladed arm and dragged her out.

"Don't you dare," the tired man warned when Dean started forward, grabbing Dean by the arm. It didn't feel right to stand there and do nothing. The woman didn't even struggle.

He asked what the green aliens were and was told they were called 'hork-bajir', which sounded familiar. Eventually he remembered that one of his yeerk's friends, Tasnik, had mentioned them.

He stared around the cavern. Surely there had to be a way they could escape. There were so many other people here – it had to be easier than trying to escape on his own. The only people who seemed to be guarding the cages were the two hork-bajir, and surely they could overpower those. There had to be a way. When he said this, all he got in response was a slow shake of the man's head.

Some time later, the hork-bajir came for him. He tensed, preparing to tear free and run as soon as he was out of the door, but it was no more use than it had been before.

"No," he found himself yelling. "No, not again. No... "

It was different to the first time; this time the yeerk eagerly seized control, its consciousness flowing smoothly into Dean's limbs, taking them away from him. The yeerk's mind brushed against Dean's and he felt its attention on him for a few seconds. It wasn't a greeting; it was just an acknowledgement of familiarity.  _Ah, yes, you. I know you_.

‹Yeah, I'm still here,› Dean said miserably. He felt sick.

The two hork-bajir pulled Dean up off the pier by his arms. The yeerk shrugged his shoulders as they let go, and set off at a brisk walk down the pier. Now it would go back home, to Dean's late microwaved dinner and Dean's homework, and Dean's mother...

The yeerk turned right, heading purposefully for the exit. They passed the cages that Dean had spent the last few hours in. The yeerk didn't pay a single look or thought to them, strolling past as if they were just furniture.

By the time Dean's mother came home, it had carefully arranged itself with Dean's homework on the kitchen table to greet her with a carefree smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey readers, just a quick author's note to address something that a couple of people asked when I posted these chapters on ff.net. Namely, the 'Britishisms' in this story. I am Australian. When I started seriously writing this story, I decided that I wasn't going to try to write in an 'American' way. It just didn't feel natural, and I would be bound to make a ton of mistakes.
> 
> This story isn't set in the same town, the same pool, as the Animorphs themselves were at. This is partially because it gives me more freedom to write the plot I want, and partially because I think there must have been other pools – I mean, how can you take over the world if your minions can't leave one town in California?
> 
> Where this is isn't really important to the plot. It could be wherever, America, Canada, anywhere, but I'm going to keep writing with Australian spelling and slang. Hopefully it will work out fine.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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